Bringing Home Strangers
by tielan
Summary: He claims he doesn't usually go home with strange women. [Alternate Universe, Teyla, John and Teyla friendship.]


**NOTES**: Written for the LJ community chocfic and their "Characters Of Colour Fic-a-thon" in September. The prompt was "adrenaline and crises - What if the Wraith had never existed?"

**Bringing Home Strangers**

"Was there a nest she did _not_ kick on the way down the slope?" Toran asked sharply as Teyla swung herself up on a branch, balancing herself against the rough tree-trunk as she sighted along the ridge. Her breath puffed out before her, warm in the cool and damp of the microclimate beneath the thick tree-canopy of the forest. Then she reached wordlessly down for her stunner, which Toran held.

"Toran." She chided as set the butt of the weapon against her shoulder and narrowed her eyes to judge the range.

"We have lost time," he said sharply. "You know it."

"We have time," she replied, her voice calm, although she, too, felt the prick of frustration in the setback of their plans. "I know that also. How far ahead are the wagons?"

Her mind was calculating as she aimed at the break in the undergrowth beneath the forest's trees. The stunner blasts would not reach all the way to the top tree-lined ridge, but she needed only to kill one_chakrak_ as it lumbered down the hillside. It would fall and break its neck, and at the scent of blood, its fellows would fall upon it, tearing it to shreds.

She hoped.

"They have just reached the next ridge. Menin and Bara are holding the ridge." Without words, Toran set his back against the next tree, and brought his stunner up to his shoulder, his eyes scanning the growth beneath the trees for the _chakrak_. "One down and then run for the Ring?"

"It seems wisest," she said, blowing out her breath in a long, steady stream. The _chakrak_ were territorial, and it was always dangerous coming into the forest; but they slept during the day and were difficult to rouse. Unfortunate, then, that Marel had stumbled into an aboveground nest while trying to reach the _burnel_.

Movement on the ridge.

"Teyla..."

"I see them." She watched and counted as the pack hesitated at the top of the ridge, four-legged creatures with heavy, brutish shoulders and chests tapering to powerfully muscled legs. She aimed carefully for the lead creature, following its trail as it scampered down the steep hillside.

_Wait, wait, wait...now._ The stunner jerked back against her shoulder, sending it into the bite of the tree bark into her back. Teyla ignored the momentary pressure and pain, watching the creature as it froze between one step and the next.

"Hit," she said, dropping the weapon down into the leaves below and swinging down.

"Well shot," he said, turning, and Teyla crouched to grab her stunner.

The snarl turned her an instant before the weight hit her shoulder, smashing her to the ground. There was hot breath steaming at her jaw, far too close to her throat, and she rolled, shoving with her arms to get the creature off her.

Toran was yelling something; she saw the swing of his stunner before something dribbled into her eye. The cut on her forehead was a vague sting; she swiped at it with a hand still dirty with leaf, dirt, and fur. Beyond them, racing through the undergrowth, the _chakrak_ were coming - at least twenty - far more than the three Marel had woken when she stumbled through the nest.

Her fingers felt frozen, and would not curl around the length of the stunner. Teyla jerked herself up into a sitting position and gritted her teeth with the effort of bringing the elongated weight up.

Overhead, she heard the buzz-whump of more weapon pulses, and knew that Menin and Bara were attacking the oncoming _chakrak_. They could do nothing about the one that was even now savaging Toran's head and shoulders - too close to risk a pulse.

Her body screamed, her breath dragged, but she demanded and her muscles obeyed. The stunner swung at the hindquarters of the beast. It connected and her shoulder screamed with pain, but the beast tumbled aside and left off its prey.

It turned towards her, pale eyes summing her up with cold intent as she wriggled herself propped up against a root of the tree. Toran didn't move; his eyes were closed. Teyla could not see if he yet breathed.

She pulled the knife from its fire-hardened sheath as the creature's silvered muzzle opened in a lolling grin, and it licked Toran's blood from its chops. Her stunner lay discarded. It was useless without sufficient distance and the time to aim it.

Someone nearby cried out as the creature leaped for her. Her arm lashed out, a timed thrust that caught the creature across the snout and grated the edge of the blade upon the nasal softbone. It growled and she felt the sharp claws scrabble at her shoulder, sliding to her breast and stabbed up into the chest, seeking the point beneath the ribs that might access the heart.

Four sharp noises reverberated through the forest, and blood spattered out, across the face. There was the sudden ooze of blood down the hand holding the knife, and the beast jerked and relaxed.

She was panting and tired, but more effort was yet required. This one creature had caught her unawares. The others would not be so considerate as to wait. Teyla shoved the bleeding thing it off her and lunged to her feet.

The hand that grabbed her arm was unexpected and she shoved, but he did not let her go. "Hey!"

Teyla tried to find something to hold onto as they lurched, unbalanced, but there was only him.

They landed hard in the ground. He grunted and wheezed a little as her leg pushed into his groin and his hand groped at the small of her back. She hissed as the squarish lump in front of him dug into her belly and breastbone with painful solidarity, and her cheekbone smacked into a jaw faintly rough with not-quite growth.

Behind her, someone was amused and failing to hide it. "Sir? You okay?"

"If he's got alien women throwing themselves at him, I think he's okay."

Teyla looked down into eyes that reflected the leaf canopy above, a man's face, clean lines and his mouth set in a wince. His body felt well formed where she could feel it beneath the thick material of his clothing and his fist pressed lightly at the base of her spine, the ridges of his knuckles light and cool against her bare skin. Heat rose, unbidden, through her skin and she shifted, causing him to hiss slightly.

"I apologise," she said, realising the source of his anguish and removing her knee. It was a moment made for something between laughter and a desperate plea for forgiveness, but there was no time.

"S'okay," he grunted as she rolled off him. "Accident."

He accepted her assistance up, but was slow let go of her hand as he turned to the men who held weapons of a strange design to their shoulders. Bursts of bright fire flashed as the weapons chattered noisily, and the _chakrak_ yelped and died, but still drove forwards.

"Will they keep coming?" He asked, lifting his voice to be heard over the noise. In his free hand, Teyla noticed another weapon, smaller and blunt-ended.

Who were these men and from where had they come?

She answered the question. "The _chakrak_? Until their losses are too many, or they feel they are avenged. It is not usually this many."

"Teyla!" Menin tugged at her arm, handing her a stunner. "Toran is dead. The wagons must have reached the Ancestors' Ring by now - we must go!"

"Wait!" Teyla caught the eye of the dark-haired man. "It is not safe here now the _chakrak_ are roused." And she wanted to know more about these people. She had never seen their like before in her all her passages through the Ring. "You came through the Ring?"

"The Stargate? Yeah." The man began rapping out orders with a commander's brisk expectancy. "Ford and Markham fall back and cover, Jensen and I will hold. We cover and retreat, got that?"

"Sir!" Two of the men promptly turned and ran, and Teyla indicated that Menin and Bara should go with them.

Bara grabbed for the stunner beneath her spare arm, setting her own against her shoulder, and Menin hauled Toran up over his shoulder. Pained and grim, Teyla turned her eyes from her friend's bloody face and limp hands and walked forward to set the stunner to her shoulder.

The_chakrak_ still came, more of them now although the weapons of the strangers flashed bright bursts and they fell and died. Some stopped to eat, but many others kept coming - strange behaviour by any standards.

Teyla accounted for two of them before the dark-haired stranger grabbed her arm and tugged her in the direction of the ring. "Fall back!"

In the scramble through the thickets and leafbrush, with the chattering flashes continuing to echo through the air, Teyla did not ask his name, and it was not until they the darkest of the four strangers paused as he reached them as they guarded his retreat that the matter came up.

"Back to Atlantis, sir?"

"We might have to hitch a ride with these people to their planet," he said, glancing over at Teyla. "If the lady doesn't mind."

"You are welcome to passage to my planet. From there you may rest or return to your own world."

"Thanks." His weapon chattered a little more in his hands and Teyla marked another with her stunner. And still the beasts came on.

"I do not understand," she murmured, half to herself, half to the man. "This is not the usual behaviour of the _chakrak_. The nests do not unite like this."

The stranger grimaced. "Yeah, well, you'd know better than we would. We came, we saw, we wandered around, and the next moment all these things were after us."

She frowned. "It may be that they are after you." It was the only thing different to all the other times that she and her people had been here to harvest _burnel_.

"Wonderful." The tone of his voice intimated that it was anything but.

Still, she appreciated his bravery when he told the other man to run back to the Ring - although they called it a Stargate - and stood his ground with her at the ridge, to...what was the term he used? Cover their retreat.

Two more of the beasts fell. Whatever his weapon did, it could do it several times in the space of time that the stunner could pulse once and faster and harder than arrows or slingshot.

Calls from the field behind them made her turn. The sheet-covered wagon was being rolled through with the efforts of her people. She glimpsed Halling's tall form, anxiously looking back for sign of her.

Her companion glanced at her. "You're okay to run?"

Teyla aimed her pulse blast at the lead _chakrak_ and tucked her stunner beneath her arm. His condescension was well meant, but unnecessary; her response was a challenge. "Are you?"

It was surprising how easily she outpaced him; he laboured to keep up with her at first, then dropped behind. Gratified and concerned, Teyla slowed, modifying her pace to match.

"I'm still here," he muttered as he ran.

"Yes, you are," she agreed, unable to quite help a smile as his face darkened. "Keep going." She slowed even more and looked over her shoulder to determine if the _chakrak_ were following them out of their usual habitat and into the new.

They were.

Out of the cool forests and into the warm sun, the beasts came, the first ones slinking forward with more caution, unaccustomed to the heat of the sun on their bare hides, the hinder ones leaping past them, reckless and determined through the rich green of the landscape with its purplish sky overhead.

Most of her people were gone through to Athos, only Halling waited at the gate. Her companion was signalling his men through, yelling orders at them, and they went through just as he reached the connection device and turned back for her. She met Halling's eye and he went.

As she slowed down to passage through the Ring, the stranger fell into step with her. "You know," he said in conversational tones, "this is the first time I've gone home with a woman I don't know."

Teyla had only a moment to register the wry note of innuendo that underlay his statement before they plunged into the Ring.

Light and air and sun gave way to the strange tingle across her 'skin' - if she even had skin while in passage - and the disembodied sense of travelling through a blue-green tube, until they were spat out at the Ring on Athos to the sighs of relief of her people and his.

Here, the air was cooler and crisp with the autumn chill, and the sun's light was weaker. Teyla inhaled deeply of the familiar scents of pine resin and river moss. Her companion blew out a short breath and shook himself, like one of the canines after a swim. "Still not used to that," he muttered.

Teyla felt laughter bubble up in her chest as the passage closed behind them. "I am Teyla Emmagen," she said, answering the implied question of his last utterance before they'd entered the Ring. "Daughter of Tagan."

"John Sheppard," he said, holding out his hand, before seeming to realise that she did not know what to do with his outstretched hand. "God, I'm not used to that, either. Um. Hi."

He seemed so disconcerted by this that she laughed openly and took him by the shoulders, bending her head towards his in the Athosian gesture of respect and honour. "John Sheppard. You are welcome to Athos."

And as he cautiously bent his head towards hers, her sense of mischief forced her to add, "And I am honoured to be the first."

-**fin** -


End file.
